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Double Dragon Trilogy – A Reminder That The Past Should Stay On Emulators

How in the hell did a former console and arcade classic wind up being pimped up in its yesteryear glory with no upgrades other than the logo on the title screen?

Ask developer DotEmu, who apparently has a vendetta against players as seen by the release of Double Dragon Trilogy.

Apparently, DotEmu didn’t want to be bothered giving Jimmy and Billy a modern makeover because obviously they only had ten bucks in the budget to get this entry remade. So they ponied up five bucks and used the same dated makeup they slapped on the Metal Slug franchise mask for its coming out party, while telling all players to kiss their cheap asses.

Ironically, that franchise got way better attention in the graphics department than this one.

Thirty years of evolutions in engines and software later, all DotEmu could come up with were the same graphics slightly touched up for the HD type effect. Was it that hard to touch up a sprite sheet to cleaner graphics? The mod community does this all the time with no problems, and for FREE. What’s your excuse of remastering Double Dragon Trilogy and not upgrading the graphics from the 1980s?

Hell, even Ducktales got a new shiny coat of paint across old Scrooge. So why are Billy and Jimmy exempt from such a star studded makeover?

You do realize DotEmu, that emulators are pretty easy to use and even easier to be found on the PC platform. Compared to this craptastic shitfest you dropped unto the world like cancer, the originals that are easily accessible of the emulation medium are far better and more stable predecessors this poor excuse for a version rerelease.

So don’t lie to yourself and act as if you have nostalgic players over a barrel with this classic, because you don’t. Worst possible scenario, there is always Double Dragon Neon to fall back on.

There is no excuse for butchering the remastering of the very first pioneering brawler. A piss poor job was done recreating the sprites and the music; controls were laggy and unresponsive most times, and more so, ALL of the bugs from the original releases were still to be FOUND damn near thirty years later.

You mean to tell me that the coding was so over your head there’s nothing you can do about it? Or are you just a control freak that gets off giving players glitch freezing bugs on a platformer not designed with accurate save points? Well hold your head in shame then. It’s a dark frozen day in hell when MAME can emulate your work better than you can, and without any of the source code.

Adding insult to injury, DotEmu ported the arcade version and NOT the NES version, which is was the vast majority of fans know and love. Guess Quality and Assurance decided that the stable console version was not worthy enough of being adequate source material for a port. That leaves players not even dealing with tiny bugs that could be worked over with blowing in a cartridge. We’re talking big bugs that make arcade machines go in for servicing.

Oh, DotEmu. There is never any rest on the wearies nerves, now is there?

There could have been, had you did this thing right. Porting all three titles in like that Metal Slug Anthology mess with no major upgraded enhancements definitely has revoked your admittance to E3 next year. So what, you threw a bone and gave us story and arcade mode. Eliminate free play or the ability to have continues just reigned down fire and brimstone, asshole.

Because players love, love, love losing all their lives and instead of starting from the level they died in, or a save point, they have to take it on the chin and start back from the beginning. Nothing says choke yourself more like replay from the beginning hell.

It’s hard to believe after the prolific releasing and development of titles, DotEmu didn’t have the sense of a June bug to at least correct the fighting mechanisms that plagued the game from initial release. No one likes a detestable delay on contact punches to enemies, if they even register initially at all. Punching up to twenty-five times to get rid of an enemy that can knock you out with a one-shot is not fundamentally challenging. It’s a damn bug that needs to be patched.

Just like when the protagonist can’t make it up steps and ladders without falling, it’s not a mind boggling puzzle. It’s a collage of shit coding, shit porting, and obviously no beta testing, DotEmu. News flash: having to kill the character just to get past a lagging part that won’t register your actions died right around the time people stopped blowing in cartridges.

Get your head out of your ass and fix the damn thing or pull it off the market!

Gwendolyn L. Spelvin is a philosopher of the Edward Bernays Century of Self, a follower of Sigmund Freud’s explorations of the subconscious mind through chemical means, and an avid enthusiast of Adolph Hitler’s short-lived ballet career before he rose through the ranks of the Third Reich. Spelvin had dedicated her post academic career as an innovative writer that creates a written vision to prove misanthropic tendencies works with an audience, crafting a message that sways public approval towards her client’s products to the guarantee of the masses blindly supporting the company agenda without them knowing it. A dirty job, but someone has to pacify the idiots who know not what they blindly support into a continuing trek of oblivion. Last, but not least, Spelvin is a firm believer in the annihilation of the JUSTIN BELIBERS. Currently she is working on her cookbook, To Serve A Hot Man: Jeffrey Dahmer's Classic Recipes due out this Christmas.